That's how some truckers describe themselves on the American Trucker Network. They deliver despite massive ice storms across our midwest. They are also on the vanguard, a test group, for governmental controls that may eventually be imposed on the rest of us who drive automobiles and ride motorcycles. (For example, black boxes may be installed that report their position, speed, and time driving to our government. Your turn is coming!)

They face these changes with a mix of wit, arrogance, and humility and sometimes hints of evolutionary wisdom.

- Visualize a tractor-trailer stuck on the shoulder in several feet of snow. A voice is heard, "Kate, wake up, it's your turn to drive." (For those in Riolinda, check on "dinichism," the notion that males and females occupy different environments, and that females invade male niches once stabilized.)
- Buss, the mating guy, might be interested: "I got a sweater for Christmas but I wanted a screamer or a moaner." (Hard laughter at 3 A.M. will not bring on sleep.)
- Mongo called in his version of "The Night Before Christmas": The verse was particularly well done and Mongo commented, "I sorta worked on it for a year." The host, however, strapped for time, didn't give it the recognition I thought it deserved. I sent an email and asked for a copy and the host immediately agreed and asked Mongo to send one. "I'd like to have one, too, and that's from Dr. Jim, he checks in from time to time."
- Hammerhead is not a trucker but a state cop who also calls in on matters of logs and search access.

The effect is one of older heads entertaining, advising, protecting, and sometimes warning the younger ones.

Anyhow, my book should be available in another 60 days (ending a ten-year effort), I'm nearly through cutting, splitting, and stacking firewood, my bikes run well, and I've found a really neat book by Peter Csermely that, coming up from chemistry borrows from the same physics that I did when reaching down from psychology!